"The benefits of antidepressants is based upon just one probability, one which has been debunked as non-scientific by many academics. The risks of taking antidepressants are reported side effects, including self-harm, suicidal thoughts and suicide completion. And we are **still** told by Dr's, pharmaceutical companies and medicine regulators that the benefits outweigh the risks. This is an incorrect statement.."

Monsanto Roundup Lawsuit

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Book: The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg by Doug Bremner

I remember when I first came across the name, 'Doug Bremner', I thought he was just another shill from Emory, a University that has provided us with so many pharma whores down the years.

I was wrong.

Doug and I have corresponded many times over the last 12 months or so, he has even offered me advice regarding my book.

He's one of the good guys.

Doug is now in the process of promoting his new book, 'THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGG: A Pharmaceutical Industry Morality Tale'

Here's the blurb:

Described by one reader as "Erin Brockovich meets 'The Constant Gardener,'" the work tells the story of Professor Doug Bremner, a researcher and psychiatrist who blew the whistle on the dangers of Accutane, a prescription medication for the treatment of acne that produces toxic side effects causing depression and resulting in numerous suicides. As a result, he got chewed up and spit out by Roche Pharmaceuticals of Nutley, NJ, the company that earned a billion dollars a year from marketing this drug. Bremner describes his struggles with the drug company and the toll they took on his career, marriage and family. The book reads like a thriller because Bremner's narrative involves greed, power, lust, lies, tragedy, danger and death.

Drawn into the medication controversy as an unwilling participant, Bremner learns that he must confront the lies and deception in his own life before he can confront those of others. Thus, a second thread involves the sudden death of Bremner's mother when he was four and a half years old. With nothing to lose, he embarks on a journey to uncover the truth about his mother. He must overcome 40 years of lies and distortion about facts related to her death. Eventually, he locates his mother's ashes, and he and his siblings buy a tombstone and have a ceremony where they place it over their mother's burial site in Olympia, Washington.

With legal battles turning against it as well as dwindling sales resulting from the growing awareness of the dangers of the drug, Roche withdraws Accutane from the market in June 2009, thus providing Bremner's ultimate vindication.
Overall, the book reveals the inner workings of a large network of interrelated, profit-driven healthcare institutions, which include drug companies, hospitals, doctors, the FDA and the infrastructure that supports medical research and academic medicine. It is about the struggle between greed and power and truth and justice, one that affects us all

I have to take my hat off to professionals who are willing to put their careers on the line. I'm merely a blogger so am basically not restricted with my opinions. Doug and people like him have much more to lose when they blow the whistle against the darker side of pharmaceutical drugs.